How to play Taz online
- Move Taz up, down and sideways: arrow keys (the fire button is only used to start)
- Start a game: Space bar or F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- One or two players: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Player 2 joystick: T/F/G/H
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
Food slides along a set of long tables, and you move Taz between them to swallow whatever passes. Every so often a stick of dynamite comes along instead. Eat one and you lose a life. You start with three lives. The difficulty switches do nothing in this game.
The game is served as three meals of eight courses. Once you have eaten 50 items of one course, the next one arrives. After the fudgesicles the words “CRAZED WAVE” appear, and from then on the food comes much faster. Finish all three meals and the manual promises a surprise dessert.
| Course | Points each |
|---|---|
| Hamburger | 50 |
| Root beer | 100 |
| Ice cream cone | 200 |
| Fudgesicle | 300 |
| Apple core | 400 |
| Turnip, tomato, sundae | 500 |
Extra lives come at 10,000, 30,000, 50,000, 80,000, 110,000 and 150,000 points, then every 40,000 points. You can hold up to eight lives, although only four are shown on screen.
Tips
- Stay away from the edges. Items appear at the sides of the screen, and there is no time to tell food from dynamite before it reaches you.
- Wait for a clear row. Sometimes it is safer to sit still and let dynamite pass than to dive into a busy table.
- Bank lives early. The courses before the crazed wave are slow, so use them to build up extra lives.
Taz and Asterix
Atari slightly modified Taz and sold it in Europe as Asterix, with the Gaulish comic hero in place of the Tasmanian Devil and objects such as helmets, shields and cauldrons to collect instead of food. The North American Taz cartridge was also reissued later with Atari’s silver label.
